


My Pulse Beneath Your Hand

by Maeple



Series: Touriko Week 2018 [7]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Fluff, Kissing, Touriko Week, Touriko Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 20:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15803760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeple/pseuds/Maeple
Summary: Touka has an experiment to do for bio--but what she doesn't understand is why she couldn't do it herself. After all, it was just pulse-taking.ForTouriko WeekDay 7Prompts:Group Project Partners/Family/"Wait, I have something."





	My Pulse Beneath Your Hand

Yoriko was sitting in the university library with her friends between two shelves, each of them going over their respective papers and homework, occasionally chatting in hushed tones.

Kimi was pouring over a textbook, tongue sticking slightly out as she jotted down notes. Hide was working on math homework that looked complicated to Yoriko, who was typing up an essay. Yoriko glanced up from her laptop to see Kaneki next to Hide, annotating some book.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Homework," came the simple reply. Yoriko deadpanned, but Kaneki seemed too involved to notice.

She was about to ask a more specific question when Touka rounded the corner, appearing from behind one of the bookshelves.

Yoriko felt her heart take a leap that it never quite came back down from as she saw the purple hair and dark eyes. Touka seemed a bit tired (but who wasn't?), bags under her eyes and shoulders slumping. Yoriko forced herself to drop her gaze before Touka looked back to her.

Touka was her best friend, and the girl she so happened to have a massive crush on. In her defense, it was tough not to, with someone so gorgeous and funny and genuine. She might not be rainbows and sunshine, and god forbid she be, but what she expressed came off as nothing short of authentic, and Yoriko appreciated that.

Her crush was bad.  _Really bad_. To the point that she couldn't meet Touka's eyes without feeling her face heat up.

"Hey, Touka," Hide greeted. "What's with the face?" he asked as she collapsed into the chair next to Kaneki's.

"I have an experiment to do for bio," Touka sighed unhappily, frowning as she rested her chin in her hand, propping it up with her elbow on the table.

Yoriko thought she looked kind of cute like that.

"What's so bad about it?" Yoriko asked, closing her laptop.

Touka laughed a bit nervously. "You see... I need another person for it..."

"Oh? What is it?" Kaneki asked as he looked up.

"Um... just... pulse stuff. I have to check someone's pulse from multiple points while they're idle, and again when they've like. Taken a run or something. I don't understand why I can't just measure my own pulse though."

Yoriko felt her face warm. She could offer--No. Nope. No need to make things awkward.

Well,  _she_  didn't need to, it turned out.

"I'm sure Yoriko could help!" Hide flashed Touka a smile, his eyes darting to the side to give the brunette a sidelong glance. Yoriko glared at him, but immediately perked up.

"Yeah, I'd be willing to be your partner!"

_In more ways than one._

Yoriko went along with it, though she internally cursed the blonde.

Touka gave a relieved smile. "Really? Thanks, Yoriko! You're my savior!"

 

* * *

 

 

Later that evening, Yoriko found herself sitting on Touka's bed, legs dangling over the side as she watched the purple-haired girl prepare some sheets of paper, drawing sloppy table charts on them.

The brunette let out a breath. Her heart was already pounding against her ribcage, probably the equivalent of sprinting the 50-meter dash. And Touka would feel that. She didn't think it was really such a good idea, she knew she was going to get nervous like this.

And Yoriko simply couldn't imagine her pulse remaining steady with Touka touching her.

The sun was setting and the lighting in Touka's room was slowly getting dimmer.

"Uh, you sure you're okay?" Touka asked, eyeing her.

Yoriko quickly gave a reassuring nod. "Yeah, it's just... your results probably won't be... accurate..."

Touka furrowed her eyebrows as she took out a pen from her pencil pouch. "Why? I'm just checking your pulse."

Yoriko shrugged. "I'm just... kind of... um... nervous, I guess."

Touka narrowed her eyes. "Oh. Eh. Well, for your sake, let's get the worst one over with. We can start with the carotid artery. That's the neck one."

Yoriko tensed and froze when Touka's hand gently brushed against the side of her neck. Yoriko blushed as she looked back to Touka, who gave her an oblivious grin that made butterflies flutter in her stomach.

"Um--how many pulse points are there?" Yoriko asked, mostly to distract herself.

Touka's stare was focused, but not on anything in front of her. Yoriko could see her lips part in little movements as she silently counted the beats.

"Eight," Touka answered.

Oh.  _Eight?_ Eight more times of _this?_

"Wow--your pulse is fast," she commented as she removed her hand when the timer on her phone went off. Yoriko swallowed as Touka jotted a couple of numbers on the table.

"It was just--uh... kind of odd," Yoriko admitted. She swore the spot where Touka touched burned, even when her hand was removed.

Touka nodded. "Yeah, sorry about that. Next, we'll do the temporal artery," she said casually.

Temporal? Oh--Yoriko could assume where that was.

Touka set the timer and carefully placed her hand against Yoriko's head, brushing some of her hair out of the way. Yoriko looked down.

"C-can you really feel my pulse through my forehead?" she stuttered.

Touka nodded, her lips moving again.

There were an awkward thirty seconds that passed between them in silence. Well, awkward for Yoriko, anyways.

"Alright," the other drawled. "Now the facial artery. Is that okay?"

No, no, it's not okay, Yoriko was internally screaming.

"Yep," she agreed.

And Touka's thumb was there again, her touch feather-light. Yoriko had to look down, she couldn't do so much as stare at Touka's legs or her shoes now. It was too much, her face was on fire and she was sure Touka had at least noticed.

"Oh--your pulse jumped there," Touka said as she shifted into a more comfortable position.

It was too much.

She only allowed herself to breathe again when Touka wasn't touching her.

"Oh?" Yoriko asked faintly. Touka's obliviousness would've been absolutely hilarious if she wasn't so close.  _So close_.

"Can we do the brachial artery next?" Touka asked. She sounded like a doctor with all those words Yoriko didn't know.

"Um--sure."

"Oh--the one on your wrist," Touka explained as she reached.

Yoriko stiffened, some swelling emotion seized her heart as the other's hand weakly grasped her wrist. The emotion was almost like fear in the way it gripped her, almost like tears with how fast it came, and maybe a bit like the keenness, in the way it struck stuck to life like flint.

But unlike those emotions, it was buoyant, not dense. It rose in her chest, it did not make her heart sink to her stomach.

Yoriko's mouth was parted slightly, her eyes wide for a long moment.

Touka's long bangs covered one of her eyes, as if she were hiding away from Yoriko. The brunette was surprised she could notice this, if anything, in that moment where the world seemed to slow and her heartbeat quickened in turn.

A few years before, with Touka, her tongue could run away from her, vertiginous with the height of the tower of words it could build up within minutes, chatting away about absolutely nothing. But as time went on, she slowly started developing those feelings, and she was able to talk less and less without feeling flustered.

Touka pulled back and jotted something down. Yoriko exhaled again.

"Jeez, Yoriko," she mused. "Your heart is fast! At this point, I won't need the pulses after you run, I could just use these."

She raised her eyebrows, giving Yoriko a half-concerned glance.

"Anyways, you're gonna need to take off your socks."

Yoriko stared at her. "Are you telling me there's a pulse on my foot?"

"Yes, Yoriko, that is exactly what I'm telling you. And there's two, actually."

"O-oh..." she trailed off as she lifted her knee up, slipping off her socks and setting them to her side.

"Thanks," Touka said. She hoisted Yoriko's foot onto her lap, her fingers trailing right below her toes.

Yoriko felt a tingling sensation and stifled a small laugh with her hand, resisting the urge to kick her foot. "That--" Yoriko jerked her leg away, and Touka's hands in the process. "--tickles," she giggled.

Touka sighed and gave her an amused look. "I know, sorry. I just need to feel around for the pulse."

Yoriko composed herself and cleared her throat as she set her foot back on Touka's lap. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Touka said, her hands now on the overside of her foot. "This one here is the dorsalis pedis artery." Yoriko gave a small nod as she began the timer again.

Another awkward minute.

Touka wrote another number down. "And this one," she began, two fingers moving to Yoriko's ankle, "is the posterior tibial."

Yoriko had no idea what that meant, but she embarrassingly admitted to herself that she could listen to Touka sprout intelligent, big words all day.

"Um--The last one... is on the underside of your knee, the popliteal artery!" Touka said. "It's almost over, I promise."

Yoriko nodded. Well, it was a good thing she was wearing shorts. But that wouldn't make it any less uncomfortable.

Touka's two fingers found the underside of Yoriko's knee and counted the beats.

Touka was so oblivious, despite how fast Yoriko's heart was.

"Wait--you said there were eight, didn't you...?" Yoriko asked in mild confusion. The head, the face, the neck, the wrist, the two on the feet, and this one... that was only seven.

"Um--yeah," Touka said, a blush rising to her face. "There're eight pulses, but I'm only--measuring seven."

"Oh?"

Touka filled out the last of the chart. "Um. There's another on your inner thigh that I'm not going to measure, the femoral artery."

"Oh... yeah."

It was so awkward, and Yoriko almost couldn't stand those feelings anymore. They made her self-conscious and hyper-aware of almost everything about Touka.

"Um--you know, Touka..." Yoriko began. She had no idea where the courage came from, but it was there, rising higher than those feelings that made butterflies in her stomach or caused words to fall out of her mouth clumsily. "Aren't you... forgetting a pulse point?"

Touka furrowed her eyebrows in genuine confusion. "What do you mean? There're only eight?" It came out more of a question than a statement.

Yoriko willed herself not to blush, but that didn't do much. "Um... I heard there was another... uh... on your... lips..."

She watched Touka's face heat up, watched her duck behind her hair. "O-oh... Um... th-there... there uh... might be..."

Touka seemed to take the hint, eyes slightly widened and face red. "You um... do you want me... to... to check...?" She gave a nervous laugh, a weird expression taking her face.

Yoriko's cheeks were burning as she gave a small nod, and an awkward laugh to accompany Touka's.

Touka hesitated but began to lean forward slowly, still uncertain, glancing away every so often.

Yoriko could only watch as she got even closer.

So _close._

Yoriko stared into Touka's eyes. She met her gaze for the first time in a long time, finally looked into those dark depths until her eyes fell closed, Touka's breath ghosting her own lips, radiating heat.

Their lips met, and something a bit like anxiety flooded over her, filled her with crashing waves and panicking, fluttering butterflies.

Except there was no threat or fear behind them.

They were soft, light, encouraging, not heavy and forceful.

Yoriko felt Touka's lips move against hers. Her nerves sang with a sort of unseeing bravery as she kissed back.

It was gentle and inexperienced, a bit reluctant but dizzying in a way that left her weightless, lifted her up with her head in the clouds as they pulled away.

Yoriko blinked open her eyes again as she sat back.

Touka gave a breathy chuckle. "Um--wow..."

Yoriko licked her lips, feeling a renewed blush rising to her face. "Yeah..." she said. "Uh--so... how's my pulse...?"

Touka gave a rare, soft smile at her. "Dunno, Yoriko... pretty sure it was going a mile a minute... with all the... heart palpitations."

Yoriko blinked.

"The what?"

"You might've felt like your heart was skipping a beat, or too hard, or too fast."

"Oh."

Yoriko grinned at her.

"Well, when it's with you, I always seem to have to catch my breath."

Touka blushed. "Oh... well... it's only fair, you make me speechless when you smile."

Yoriko huffed. "Apparently not that time."

Touka laughed. "That's... well..."

"Just kiss me again already, you dork."

Touka complied.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sad Touriko week is over!! :( These two need more love. But thanks for reading!.


End file.
